A 3-day push/pull/legs plan trains the pushing muscles on one day, the pulling muscles on another and the legs on the third, so each muscle gets one session a week. The plan below is what the Zyra Workouts generator produces for 60-minute sessions, an intermediate lifter and a hypertrophy goal — the same tables as the 3-day push/pull/legs program page. It is a generated template, not a prescription.
Who this layout suits
The layout suits someone with three training days who prefers a day built around one movement pattern — five pushing exercises in a row, then five pulling, then five for the legs — over a full-body day that spreads five exercises across the whole body. The generator lays the three days out as T·R·T·R·T·R·R (slots floor(i × 7 / 3) = 0, 2, 4), with a rest day between sessions.
Inputs: split pushPullLegs, daysPerWeek 3, sessionMinutes 60, experience intermediate, goal hypertrophy, no focus or deprioritised muscles, no deload.
The three days
Sixty minutes buys 5 exercises a session. The rosters are Push: chest, shoulders, triceps; Pull: back, biceps, core; Legs: quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves. The generator takes one compound per roster muscle, then cycles the roster for isolations until five slots are full.
| Push | Type | Sets | Reps | RIR (cycle 1) | Default rest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barbell bench press | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 180 s |
| Barbell overhead press | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 180 s |
| Close-grip bench press | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 150 s |
| Cable fly | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 60 s |
| Dumbbell lateral raise | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 60 s |
| Pull | Type | Sets | Reps | RIR (cycle 1) | Default rest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conventional deadlift | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 180 s |
| Barbell curl | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 90 s |
| Hanging leg raise | compound (catalog) | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 90 s |
| Dumbbell curl | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 60 s |
| Plank | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 60 s |
| Legs | Type | Sets | Reps | RIR (cycle 1) | Default rest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back squat | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 180 s |
| Dumbbell Romanian deadlift | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 120 s |
| Barbell hip thrust | compound | 3 | 6–10 | 3 | 150 s |
| Standing calf raise | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 60 s |
| Leg extension | isolation | 3 | 10–15 | 2 | 60 s |
Fifteen working sets a day, 45 a week. The pull day deserves a plain explanation: its roster has three muscles, so pass one fills three slots (deadlift, barbell curl, hanging leg raise). Pass two cycles the roster looking for isolations — back has none in the catalog, so the fourth slot goes to a second biceps exercise and the fifth to a second core exercise. The generator is doing exactly what its rules say; a manual swap of the dumbbell curl for a barbell bent-over row is the obvious edit if back is a priority.
Weekly credit per muscle (primary 1, secondary 0.5) against the app's landmarks:
| Muscle | Credited | Landmark | Muscle | Credited | Landmark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chest | 7.5 | 12 | Quads | 6 | 14 |
| Back | 4.5 | 14 | Hamstrings | 7.5 | 10 |
| Shoulders | 12 | 14 | Glutes | 7.5 | 10 |
| Biceps | 6 | 10 | Calves | 3 | 10 |
| Triceps | 6 | 10 | Forearms | 6 | 6 |
| Core | 9 | 10 |
In plain terms: fifteen well-organised sets per pattern, once a week each — with back the muscle the rules leave shortest.
Why each muscle is hit once a week here
Push/pull/legs divides the body into thirds. With three days, each third gets one day, so every muscle on the rosters is trained exactly once. That is not a design choice of this plan; it is what the arithmetic of a three-way split does at three days. The same three days on a full-body layout would train quads, chest, back, shoulders, hamstrings and core three times each, with the 3-day full body plan landing at the same 45 sets a week.
What you get in exchange is concentration: three chest-and-shoulder pressing movements plus two isolations in one session, rather than one press per day. Whether once a week with more exercises beats three times a week with fewer is the frequency question, and the honest answer from the app's own rules is that they do not decide it — they only count. The days-a-week article covers what the one verified frequency study we cite found, with its limits.
Doubling the days doubles the frequency: the 6-day push/pull/legs program runs these same three sessions twice.
Sets, reps and RIR — where the numbers come from
- Reps by type. Hypertrophy compounds
6–10, isolations10–15. - RIR by type. Compounds from a base of
2, isolations from1. The RIR / RPE converter maps RIR 2 to RPE 8 and RIR 1 to RPE 9. - Sets. 3 across the board at intermediate.
- Rest. Catalog defaults: 180 s for the bench, overhead press, deadlift and squat; 150 s for the close-grip bench and hip thrust; 120 s for the Romanian deadlift; 90 s for the barbell curl and leg raise; 60 s for the rest.
Progressing across six cycles
Six cycles of the 7-day layout, RIR ramping with rir = round(top − (c / 5) × (top − bottom)):
| Cycle | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 with deload |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compounds (base RIR 2) | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| Isolations (base RIR 1) | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| Sets per exercise | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
Loads come from the progression engine: beat the ceiling (round((repMin + repMax) / 2) + RIR) and it suggests one step up next time, miss the rep floor and it suggests one step down, land inside and it holds.
The short version
Push, pull, legs, one day each, a rest day between. Five exercises a day, 3 sets each, 45 working sets a week, every muscle once. Back comes out at 4.5 credited sets because the catalog has no back isolation to fill the pull day — swap a curl for a row if that matters. Every number is the generator's own and reproducible on the program page; the weekly sets calculator shows the week against the landmarks. A generated training template, not a prescription. Educational overview only — not medical advice.